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They are coming down hard on protestors because the powers the be are scared and weak. They are stretched thin and are incompetent. They lost Vietnam, they lost the Middle East, they lost Cuba, they lost North Korea, they lost Ukraine and they'll eventually lose the world.
You are currently in the claws of the beast and the beast is dying. You will be free of it's clutches, keep biting its hands. It's squeezing you because your bites hurt it. Do not give up.
If that feels like it's not much, all of those losses are a relatively short amount of time. In terms of how long systems last, ~70 years is a very short time. The Fall of the Roman Empire probably did not feel like a quick, cataclysmic event when it happened.
And the Byzantine Empire specifically lasted over 1000 years, it must've felt unchangeably immortal when it fell.